Kate Leaver

She has written for the Guardian, Glamour, the Independent, the Evening Standard, Vogue, Refinery29 and The Pool. She has appeared as a commentator on BBC Woman’s Hour, Badass Woman’s Hour and Channel 4 News.

Kate has interviewed Eddie Redmayne, Nicole Kidman, Jessie J, Ezra Miller, Andrew Solomon and Bill Bailey, as well as two Kardashians, two prime ministers and two members of the Monty Python crew.

In Australia, where Kate began her career (and life), she was features editor at Cosmopolitan magazine and senior editor at Mamamia, as well as a regular commentator on TV and radio.

Kate was a children’s entertainer and has taught drama to high-school students. She has a degree in Arts, Media and Communications from the University of Sydney, where she once won a poetry prize judged by Les Murray for a three-course limerick about Masterchef. Kate did a fellowship with the International Herald Tribune in Seoul, South Korea, and performed comedy cabaret at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

She has published her first book, The Friendship Cure, and now lives in London with her boyfriend and her dog, Bertie.

Books

The Friendship Cure: A Manifesto for Reconnecting in the Modern World

Kate Leaver

Our best friends, gal-pals, bromances, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, long-distance buddies and WhatsApp threads define us in ways we rarely acknowledge. There is so much about friendship we either don’t know or don’t articulate: why do some friendships last a lifetime, while others are only temporary? How do you break up with a toxic friend? And maybe the most important question: how can we live in the most interconnected age and still find ourselves stuck in the greatest loneliness epidemic of our time? It is killing us, making us miserable and causing a public health crisis. What if meaningful friendships are the solution, not a distraction.

In The Friendship Cure, Kate Leaver’s much anticipated manifesto brings to light what modern friendship means, how it can survive, why we need it and what we can do to get the most from it. From behavioural scientists to best mates, Kate finds extraordinary stories and research, drawing on her own experiences to create a fascinating blend of accessible smart thinking, investigative journalism, pop culture and memoir.

‘A gorgeous book and a reminder of just how intense and special female friendship is.’

— Emma Gannon, author of CtrlAltDelete

‘Kate has written a beautiful book about something so specific and unchartered, yet so universal. Friendship can change your life as could this book.’

— Dolly Alderton

‘The Friendship Cure is here to make us love our girl friends all over again… you’ll want to buy it and give it to all of your friends immediately.’